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1935 Dated WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST Inscribed and Signed Oversize Photograph!

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:10,000.00 USD Estimated At:10,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
1935 Dated WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST Inscribed and Signed Oversize Photograph!
Autographs
William Randolf Hearst Huge Signed “Valentine” Photo to His Mistress, Marion Davies: “To Marion, From W. R.”
WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST (1863-1951). Famous American Publishing Empire Builder who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, “Hearst Communications” as Portrayed in the famous award winning movie “Citizen Kane.”
February 14, 1935-Dated, Photograph Inscribed and Signed, “W. R.,” measuring 10” x 13.25” with deckled rough looking outer margin edges, matted to an overall size of 15” x 19”, Choice Extremely Fine. This excellent Oversized Photograph of Hearst was Inscribed and given to Marion Davies as a Valentine! Above the image is inscribed: “A Valentine, February Fourteenth 1935,” and below the image Hearst writes, “To Marion, From W. R.” and the following verse from the poem, “Wooing and Winning The Hermit” by Oliver Goldsmith:

“Thus let me hold thee to my heart

And every care resign

And we shall never never part

My life - my all that’s mine.

Goldsmith”

Marion Davies (1897-1961) was an American film actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Davies was already building a solid reputation as a film comedian when newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, with whom she had begun a romantic relationship, took over management of her career. Hearst financed Davies' pictures, promoted her heavily through his newspapers and Hearst Newsreels, and pressured studios to cast her in historical dramas for which she was ill-suited. For this reason, Davies is better remembered today as Hearst's mistress and the hostess of many lavish events for the Hollywood elite. In particular, her name is linked with the 1924 scandal aboard Hearst's yacht when one of his guests, film producer Thomas Ince, died.

In the film “Citizen Kane” (1941), the title character's second wife, an untalented singer whom he tries to promote, was widely assumed to be based on Davies. But many commentators, including Citizen Kane writer/director Orson Welles himself, have defended Davies' record as a gifted actress, to whom Hearst's patronage did more harm than good. She retired from the screen in 1937, choosing to devote herself to Hearst and charitable work.

In Hearst's declining years, Davies provided financial as well as emotional support until his death in 1951.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "Goody Two-Shoes".